Dry Fish and Wet Part 54

"Beg pardon, Captain, but would you mind reading out the question once again?"

A faint, almost imperceptible smile pa.s.sed over the Captain's face.

The two old skippers, Olsen and Wleugel, sat solemn as owls. Dirrik looked at the examiner, then at the censor, and finally his glance rested on us, with an expression of helpless resignation. Rudolf nodded, and whispered "Cheer up," but Dirrik neither saw nor heard.

"Compa.s.s," he murmured--"Compa.s.s needle--points--points...."

"Well," said the examiner, "_why_ does it always point to the north?"

And suddenly Dirrik's face lit up with a flash of blessed inspiration:

"Why," he said cheerfully, "I suppose it's _just a habit it's got_."

This time the examiner could not help laughing, and the censors themselves seemed to thaw a little.

"H'm," said the examiner. "Yes ... well, and suppose your compa.s.s needle happened to forget that little habit it's got, as may happen, for instance, when a vessel's loaded with iron--what would you do?"

Evidently he was in a good humour now.

"Sail by the sun and the watch," answered Dirrik promptly. He was wide awake now, and drew out as he spoke a big silver watch with a double case.

"I've sailed by this fellow here from the Newfoundland Bank to Barrow in twelve days--it was with the barque _Himalaya_, of Holmestrand."

"When was that?" asked the examiner.

"Seven years ago come Christmas it was."

Dirrik felt himself now master of the situation, and ran on gaily, as one thoroughly at ease.

"It was blinding snow on the Banks that time. The skipper was down with inflammation of the lungs, and lay in his bunk delirious; we'd s.h.i.+pped some heavy seas, and got four stanchions broken, and the mate with four of his ribs bashed in, so he couldn't move. And as for the crew, the less said about them the better. We'd three n.i.g.g.e.rs aboard and an Irishman, and a couple of drunken gentlemen that'd never been to sea before.

"Well, I had to sail and navigate and all. It was a gale that went on day after day, till you'd think the devil himself was hard at it with a bellows. But, luckily, I'd this old watch of mine, and she's better than any of your chronometers, for it's a sixteen-ruby watch----"

"Sixteen ruby--what's that?" asked the examiner with interest.

Dirrik was proud as a peac.o.c.k at the question; fancy the examiner having to ask _him_!

"Why, it's this way. If you look inside an ordinary watch, you'll find it's either five rubies or ten, but it's very rarely you come across one with sixteen, and the more rubies you've got in a watch, the better she goes. Well, anyway, when the watch came round to noon midday, I'd take the run and check off our course, and that way I got to windward of her deviations and magnetic variations and all the tricks there are to a compa.s.s mostly. Then, of course, I'd to look to the log, and mark off each day's run on the chart."

"Not so bad, not so bad," said the examiner, nodding to the skippers.

"No, we did none so badly, and that's the truth. For we got into Barrow at high water twelve days' sail from the Banks. The Insurance Company wanted to give me a gold watch, but I said, 'No, thank you, if t'was all the same, I'd rather have it in cash,' so they sent me what they call a testimonial, and 15. And that was doing the handsome thing, for it was no more than my duty after all. As for the crowd of rapscallions we'd aboard, I gave them a pound a-piece for themselves--the poor devils had done what they could, though it was little enough."

"Have you ever taken the sun's alt.i.tude with a s.e.xtant?"

"Surely," said Dirrik. "Meridian and lat.i.tude and all the rest of it."

"Well..." the examiner turned to the censors. "I think that ought to be enough...?" And the pair of them nodded approval.

"Right! That will do." Dirrik was dismissed with a gesture, and, making his bow to each in turn, he hurried out as fast as he could.

Next day one of the censors, Skipper Wleugel, came down to the school and informed us that Dirrik had pa.s.sed, albeit with lowest possible marks.

Followed cheers for Dirrik, and cheers for the examiner, and cheers for Knap--the last-named happening to come out just at that moment, to see what all the noise was about. That evening Dirrik invited Rudolf and myself to the feast he had promised--great slabs of steak and heaps of onions, with beer and snaps _ad lib._, and toddy and black cigars to top off with.

And going home that night we knocked the stuffing out of five young students from the Academy, on the grounds that they lacked the higher education Dirrik now possessed. Altogether, it was a most successful evening.

Dirrik went back home after that and married his Margine. Three months later he was the father of a bouncing boy, who was christened Sinus Knap Didriksen, in pious memory of his father's studies in the art of navigation and his teacher in the same.